[PUP] In praise of paravanes...OR twin hulls?

[Georgs Kolesnikovs]

Rod, John and others--

Anecdotes aside, the jury is still very much out on whether power 
catamarans have any real advantage over monohulls for passagemaking 
on the big waters of the world. And the the jury will stay out for 
some time to come, until more than a handful of cats have undertaken 
trans-oceanic passages to give us any kind of empirical data.

There is no question that power catamarans have many appealing 
characteristics for coastal and inland cruising. In fact, I own a 
small power cat for such cruising myself.

But for trans-oceanic voyaging--which is the realm of this 
forum--many questions remain unanswered.

The supposed efficiency of multihulls over monohulls is difficult to 
see when one crunches fuel-burn and passage-time numbers versus 
monohulls.

The supposed smooth ride is really debatable. Multihulls provide an 
abrupt motion in any kind of contrary seaway. They lurch and they 
twitch. Monohulls can roll but many sailors find the motion gentle 
and predictable.

A couple I know, who have left tens of thousands of offshore miles in 
their wake, first in sailboats, and most recently in a 
heavy-displacement monohull under 48 feet LOA, wanted a larger, 
faster and more comfortable passagemaker. Here's what they wrote in 
an email:

"Over the last year or two we had been reading about power 
catamarans.  Their advantages were purported to be more speed, more 
comfort and still capable of long range passages (2,500 NM or more). 
This intrigued us, so we began to look more seriously.  We went 
aboard all the power catamarans at the 2006 Miami Boat Show and did 
not find any production cats that we liked.  We finally found a 56' 
custom built power catamaran designed by a well known catamaran naval 
architect and built in 2002 by a respected boat builder.  We flew . . 
. to look at the boat and chartered it for several hours to do sea 
trials.  The boat was well made of composite and beautifully finished 
and we were excited.  However, the sea trial proved to us that the 
boat was unsuitable for our use for several reasons:  comfort at sea 
was poor, very noisy from slamming into head seas (even small 
headseas), very poor fuel consumption numbers from the Floscan, and 
finally the horrendous difficulty required to remove an engine should 
it need to be rebuilt.  We were really disappointed."

Shortly thereafter they purchased a larger, faster and more 
comfortable heavy-displacement monohull and are out making long 
passages again.

--Georgs

Disclaimer: I'm editor of Circumnavigator, the Nordhavn magazine. 
Before my conversion to power, I owned an offshore racing trimaran. 
I've had the good fortune to cross oceans under sail and under power.